it documents an extended period (some two decades) in the life of this
Mithraic community.
Briefly to review the data from the album,it records initially the 34
names of those who “restored at their own expense” their mithraeum,
which had been wrecked, probably in some natural disaster (templum vii
[sic]conlapsum). One of the members donated the plaque for this reded-
ication and “embellished the ceilings with paintings.” Soon after, a second,
less happy occasion was recorded: the members “came together because
of the mortality” (mortalitat[is] causa convener[unt]) on a date that trans-
lates as June 26, 184 CE. The “mortality” was likely the plague then rav-
aging the empire (Breitwieser 1995). Against five of the names is inscribed
a Greek theta,meaningthanôn= “deceased,” and eight new names are
added to the list. The Mithraists, it appears, met to mourn and commem-
orate their dead and, perhaps on the same occasion, to co-opt new mem-
bers. Fresh blocks of names, inscribed in different hands, appear thereafter,
until the albumis full. Piccottini (1994, 25–26) argues convincingly that
these represent annual cohorts. If this is so, the record of cult membership,
comprising ninety-eight names in all, extends over nineteen years. Many
of the names appear, in the same order, in another fragmentary list that
has long been extant (Piccottini 1994, 44–50). Clearly, these, too, were
Mithraists, and they, too, as this second albumrecords, “built [their edi-
fice] from the ground up at their own expense.” Piccottini argues that
they established a new and separate community; i.e., they were not sim-
ply the surviving members of the old community transcribed when the first
albumwas full.
The Virunum albafurnish unambiguous evidence of the collectivepro-
duction of religious goods, sustained over a number of years, including a
time of crisis at the beginning of the record, when the “collapse” and
rebuilding of the cult meeting place was rapidly followed by the havoc of
the plague, a disaster that bore especially heavily on the group’s leadership
(two of the five dead held the senior rank of “Father”). Yet the group sol-
diered on. Their commitment to their common enterprise is indisputable.
What was their commitment to each other? What care did they give their
dying colleagues and the sick who survived? We cannot tell. But why
assume that it was any less than the care given by an average Christian com-
munity to its own?
Or, again, to turn to peculiarly religious goods, what hope of salvation,
what confidence in their saviour god, did those dying Mithraists and their
surviving brethren carry with them? Here we have at least some footing, for
we are not totally uninformed on Mithraic soteriology and the cult’s prin-
nora
(Nora)
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